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The Science of Doctor Who by Paul Parsons

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From the front flap:
Almost fifty years after the Doctor first crossed the small screen, he remains a science fiction touchstone. His exploits are thrilling, his world is mind-boggling, and that time travel machine—known as the Tardis—is almost certainly an old-fashioned blue police box, once commonly found in London.

Paul Parsons’s plain-English account of the real science behind the fantastic universe portrayed in the television series answers such burning questions as whether a sonic screwdriver is any use for putting up a shelf, how Cybermen make little Cybermen, where the toilets are in the Tardis, and much more.

(Note: This is the 2010 revision of a book originally published in 2006.)

Review:
I am not a science person. In my years of schooling, I never once came up with a non-lame idea for a science project and was positively abysmal at experiments. I did pretty well on tests and homework, but if someone’s test tube was going to spontaneously erupt in a geyser of brown froth (true story!), it would be mine.

Suffice it to say, then, that while I enjoy science fiction entertainment, it’s not because of the science. Still, The Science of Doctor Who promises “a plain-English account of the real science behind the fantastic universe portrayed in the television series,” so I reckoned on being able to follow it. Alas, Paul Parsons’s definition of plain English is a bit different than mine.

I was okay with the majority of the material. Chapter topics include the Doctor’s recurring foes, regeneration, gadgets, weapons, space stations, force fields, parallel universes, and more. In general, Parsons would start by mentioning something that happened in a particular Doctor Who serial and then interview renowned scientists as to whether this is actually possible. Most of the time the answer is “no” or “only with extreme amounts of energy/effort,” but there are a few things that are not so far off. The chapters on alien worlds (Lots of planets really do have a north!) and mirror planets were particular favorites of mine.

Stupidly, however, I hadn’t counted on there being so much physics! I frequently found my eyes glazing over during these sections, which were unfortunately clustered near the beginning (making it hard to get started) and end (causing a strong urge to set the book down with only forty pages to go) of the book.

Take, for example, this quote from page 35:

M-theory’s main thrust is to generalize the one-dimensional objects of string theory into p-dimensional objects known, amusingly enough, as p-branes (where setting p = 0 gives a particle, p = 1 gives a string, p = 2 a “membrane,” and so on).

My brain’s response: asdlkjasldkfzzt!

Seriously, is that plain English? I note that Parsons did not bother to define “p-dimensional,” though that probably wouldn’t have been much help to me anyway.

In the end, I did learn some interesting things. In the chapter on Cybermen, for example, I learned that a cybernetic brain implant currently exists that can block the signals that cause Parkinson’s disease. That’s pretty awesome! I also now know that Sontarans reproduce by cloning and it takes only ten minutes for their offspring to reach adulthood. That’s less awesome.

I’m glad I didn’t give up on reading The Science of Doctor Who but now I think I’ll give my brain a rest by actually watching some.

Additional reviews of The Science of Doctor Who can be found at Triple Take.

A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee

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From the back cover:
Mary Quinn leads a remarkable life. At twelve, an orphan and convicted thief, she was miraculously rescued from the gallows. Now, at seventeen, she has a new and astonishing chance to work undercover for the Agency.

It is May 1858, and a foul-smelling heat wave paralyzed London. Mary enters a rich merchant’s household to solve the mystery of his lost cargo ships. But as she soon learns, the house is full of deceptions, and people are not what they seem—including Mary herself.

Review:
As a convicted thief, twelve-year-old Mary Lang is about to be executed when she is saved by the ladies of Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls. There, she receives an education and by the age of seventeen is teaching other students the skills they will need to be independent. Trouble is, she’s not satisfied and the few other career options open to her gender don’t interest her much, either. When she mentions this to the two women running the school, they suggest another alternative: the Agency.

The Agency is a covert organization of female spies, operating under the assumption that because women are presumed to be flighty and empty-headed, their agents will be able to retrieve information more easily than a man might, particularly in situations of domestic servitude. Mary quickly agrees, despite the threat of danger, and soon finds herself serving as paid companion to spoiled Miss Angelica Thorold, whose merchant father is suspected of dealing in stolen Hindu goods.

Mary (now using the surname Quinn) isn’t the lead on the investigation and isn’t supposed to actually do much of anything, but she gets antsy, and in the process of snooping meets James Easton. James’s older brother desperately wants to marry Angelica, but James has heard rumors about her father’s business practices, and so is doing some sleuthing of his own to determine whether a family connection would be unwise. He and Mary form a partnership and spend most of the book poking about in warehouses and rest homes for aging Asian sailors and following people on foot or in carriages while maintaining a flirty sort of bickering banter.

Author Y. S. Lee tries to make the mystery interesting, giving us a bit of intrigue between Angelica and her father’s secretary as a distraction, but ultimately it feels very insubstantial to me. Nothing much comes as a surprise and two story elements that could’ve been highlights—Mary’s month-long intensive training and Scotland Yard’s raid on the Thorold house—occur off camera! Too, Mary is harboring a secret about her parentage which is thoroughly obvious: she’s part Asian. Only towards the end did Lee actually make clear that Mary is keeping this a secret from others because of the foreigner bias of the time, and I must wonder whether the intended young adult audience was reading this going, “What’s the big deal?”

Not that it isn’t nifty to have a part-Asian heroine, of course. Mary is competent and level-headed, though I admit I did get irritated by how often she is favorably compared to “ordinary women,” who would scream or faint in situations in which Mary is able to keep her head. When a mystery stars a male sleuth, do we need to hear over and over how much smarter he is than the ordinary fellow? I don’t think so. On the flip side, the overall theme of the book seems to be “don’t understimate women,” and Mary finds time to inspire a scullery maid to seek out Miss Scrimshaw’s and to convince Angelica to pursue a musical career.

In the end, A Spy in the House is a decent read. It’s not perfect, but I still plan to read the second book in the series in the near future.

Additional reviews of A Spy in the House can be found at Triple Take.

Don’t Fear the Adaptation: Ristorante Paradiso

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Ristorante Paradiso | by Natsume Ono | Manga: Ohta Shuppan / Viz | Anime: David Production / Crunchyroll

Whenever you write a review of Ristorante Paradiso, you always have to get one thing out of the way first: which one is your favorite gentleman? When I read the manga, Luciano was mine, because I fall pretty hard for the gruff types who despite their claims of disinterest can’t help but meddle. And while the anime cemented my love of Luciano, I have to say anime Teo is exactly the handsome aniki I’d fall in love with at Casetta dell’Orso. It helps that he’s a dessert chef, mouthy, and also rides a motorcycle. (Lorenzo is disqualified from my rankings — he’s too perfect and there’s no way to avoid being in love with him and horribly, horribly jealous of Olga.)

Ristorante Paradiso is primarily about Nicoletta, a twenty-one year old determined to exact revenge on her mother Olga, who left Nicoletta behind in order to marry Lorenzo, a restaurant owner in Rome. But when she arrives in Rome, Nicoletta falls in love with Claudio, a waiter at Lorenzo’s restaurant, and ends up staying there as a kitchen apprentice. Like most of Natsume Ono’s stories, it’s a mature slice-of-life production with a slow plot and an ensemble cast filled with enigmatic men and self-assured women. The manga is short at one volume but has a three-volume prequel-sequel entitled Gente: The People of Ristorante Paradiso. The anime mixes and matches the overall Nicoletta-and-Claudio plot of Ristorante Paradiso but detours heavily into the backstories of Gente. The end product is very, very much House of Five Leaves meets Antique Bakery. Why else do you think I pleaded with MJto let me do a Natsume Ono double punch? ;)

Ristorante Paradiso the anime is a feel-good jousei version of a dating game crossed with a butler café. It falls somewhere in between the beloved reverse harem romcoms like Ouran Host Club and the “counseling session of the week” trope of Bartender (which, incidentally, was also adapted into an anime). Like Antique Bakery, Ristorante Paradiso has its moments of drama — some might even argue, melodrama — but it’s one of those series that ultimately boils down to its playful sampling of human life. It’s bursting with little stories about romance, family, growing up, and, well, more romance. There’s a particularly memorable side story about a woman whose husband keeps cheating on her. The dell’Orso staff, especially Gigi and Vito, get involved, and the episode caps off with a very serious, but touching, lesson about marriage and coincidence that even O’Henry would have been proud of. Episode eight and nine owe more to Giuseppe Tornatore than Iron Chef, and episode four, which chronicles the founding of dell’Orso, could be a movie all by itself.

All the characters, especially the gentlemen, get a boost from being animated and paired with a voice actor. Gigi and Lorenzo as twenty-somethings are heartwrenchingly adorable when animated, and Claudio as a young and awkward server trying to find off the amorous intentions of a rich patron will make you swoon. Of special note for me are the relatively unknown Mitsutaka Tachikawa as Luciano and Jin Yamanoi as Claudio. Listening to Yamanoi really makes you believe you’re in the presence of a saint, while Tachikawa’s Luciano is beyond endearing, especially when he growls.

The additional materials from Gente, on top of keeping the anime from having to stretch out one volume’s worth of material into eleven slow episodes, also gives more depth to Nicoletta and her relationship with Claudio. Nicoletta’s observation that love comes in different shapes makes more sense when you get to meet all the significant others of the dell’Orso staff. That they spend more time together and go through a lot more troubles together makes their ending in the anime far sweeter and more conclusive. An unexpected benefit of getting to know Luciano better in the anime was that Claudio, in the process, came into better focus. Their friendship and comparable statuses (Luciano as a widow and Claudio, a divorcee) meant Claudio comes off in the anime as more than just a nice guy. You struggle with him over his idealistic nature, sympathize with his inability to move past his ex-wife Gabrielle, and really, truly wish for his happiness. You feel like you understand just what it is that Nicoletta sees in him.

David Production is a smaller, newer studio compared to Madhouse, the studio responsible for Ono’s other anime adaptation House of Five Leaves. The style in Ristorante Paradiso is less obviously Ono’s this time around, but David Production still did an excellent job translating Ono’s art style. The glimpses of food in the series are mouthwatering, and the shots of the staff’s favorite enoteca, with shelves and shelves of wine bottles, make me want to follow Nicoletta’s journey and spend an extended vacation in Rome. There’s some awkward use of CG as well as a laughable moment in episode six, where if you pause the video in Olga’s office, you can see that the certificate behind her is issued to “Bob Fields”, Cambridge, and qualifies the recipient to teach English to adults. Other than that, the animation is top notch. Episode seven introduces Luciano’s daughter Margherita who is almost indistinguishable from Nicoletta, but that, I think, is more the fault of Ono herself and not the studio’s.

For fans of the manga who were frustrated with the slowness of Ristorante Paradiso‘s first few chapters, but liked Gente‘s character development, the anime is the best of both worlds. (It’s just a terrible shame that Crunchyroll took down their videos.) For those of you who have yet to read the manga, while some have complained that the anime’s flashbacks were too confusing, I would recommend watching the anime over reading the manga. The meshing of Gente with Ristorante Paradiso makes for a fuller, more fleshed out cast and also tempers the ending of Nicoletta’s storyline, which I found unsatisfactorily abrupt when reading the manga. It’s far from realistic, the initial conflict between Olga and Nicoletta is still solved too easily, and very few of the staff’s backstories cover truly original ground. But if you like food, are a people-watcher, or simply enjoy a little romanzo in your life, Ristorante Paradiso welcomes you to Casetta dell’Orso.

Boys’ love blind date June 2011

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Gather ‘round, and help me ponder the boys’-love titles in the June 2011 edition of Diamond’s Previews catalog! How else can I separate the men from the bores?

Private Teacher! vol. 1, written and illustrated by Yuu Moegi: Not only is the schoolwork so confusing that Rintarou needs a private tutor, but the maelstrom of emotions he feels when spending time with Kaede-san is weirdly unsettling. But when Kaede-san decides to reward unsatisfactory progress with some unusual punishment, Rintarou figures out that what he is feeling is love. But what about Kaede? Does he love Rintarou or is he just a perverted sadist? Juné Manga proudly presents the first volume of the popular manga by Yuu Moegi in her English language debut!

Sounds kinky, which may mitigate the likelihood of high-school boy dullness, but it could cross over into creepy town. It originally ran in Core Magazine’s Drap.

Mr. Tiger and Mr. Wolf, written and illustrated by Ahiru Haruno: When a tsundere wolf finds an adorable kitten, he thinks he has found the perfect wife candidate to bring up. But when it reaches adulthood, it is not only male, but rather unexpectedly is a huge Bengal tiger. The wildly popular comedy fantasy story now in English for the very first time.

That description is barely coherent, which doesn’t raise my hopes very high. Also, I’m not remotely keen on anthropomorphic boys’ love or stories with a pet construct, so you would have to sell this one very, very hard. It originally ran in Houbunsha’s Hanaoto.

Only Serious about You, written and illustrated by Kai Asou: Yoshioka is a regular at Oosawa’s workplace, and always seems to be bringing in yet another boyfriend that he wants to introduce the good food to. As a single parent, Oosawa works very hard and doesn’t have time to make many close friends, or even consider dating. But when his beloved daughter Mizu falls ill and Yoshioka offers his help, Oosawa finds he must accept this frivolous seeming person’s outstretched hand. Sometimes, people are not quite what they seem, as Oosawa discovers – a tender romance story of a single father, a lonely businessman, and the child who brings them together.

Okay, I should probably disqualify this one, because the description tracks so closely with my tastes that I’m 95% likely to just order it no matter what the consensus declares. Grown-ups with jobs and complicate personal lives! It originally ran in Houbunsha’s CitaCita.

I was going to include Seven Days: Friday – Sunday, written by Venio Tachibana and illustrated by Rihito Takarai, but it’s just a sequel to Seven Days: Monday – Thursday, which I haven’t read. They have really nice covers, though. Moving on to the 801 smut!

A Fallen Saint’s Kiss, written and illustrated by You Higashino: When high school teacher Okano is molested on the train on his way to school, the last thing he wanted was for his shame to be witnessed by anyone. But one of his students not only witnessed it, but decided to use the incident to blackmail his teacher! Threatened with exposure, Okano must submit to Tokiwa’s perverted will or have his shameful secret exposed.

Well, take that, Private Teacher! I’m not entirely sure what that pink thing is that’s strapped to the teacher’s thigh, and I’m not entirely sure I want to know. On the other hand, I do like making the comic shop clerks uncomfortable. It was originally published by Taiyo Tosho.

That’s certainly a range of options, isn’t it? What say you?

Tenjo Tenge: Full Contact Edition, Vol. 1

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When I tell people that I review manga, they often ask me, “Isn’t it all porn and ninjas?” No, I assure them, there are manga about cooking, gambling, dating, teaching, crime solving, alien fighting, computer programming, ghost busting, mind reading, wine tasting, dog training, and just about any other topic you can imagine; if there’s an audience to be served, Japanese publishers will find a way to reach them through comics. “But it seems like every manga I’ve seen has a girl in a short skirt waving a sword,” they reply. I usually offer a counter-example — say, Ouran High School Host Club or What’s Michael? — but I know the kind of manga they have in mind. It’s filled with female characters who have women’s bodies and girls’ faces; schoolgirls who wear their uniforms twenty-four hours a day; fighters who use swords, even though the story is set in the present; and supporting characters who dress like Edo-era refugees, even though their cohorts are wearing sneakers and hoodies. In short, what they’re seeing in their mind’s eye looks a lot like Tenjo Tenge.

Plot-wise, Tenjo Tenge isn’t much more complicated than “girls in skirts waving katanas.” The story takes place at Todo Academy, one of those only-in-manga institutions where students study martial arts technique to the exclusion of anything else. (If anyone attends a math class in Tenjo Tenge, I missed it.) First-year students Soichiro Nagi and Bob Makihara fully expect to rule the roost with their awesome fighting skills, but are quickly disabused of the notion when they run afoul of Todo’s Executive Council. Mindful of their greenhorn status, the boys join the Juken Club, an organization lead by Maya Natsume, a third-year student who’s handy with a sword. In so doing, however, Soichiro and Bob become targets for the Executive Council, which carries on an energetic, bloody feud with Maya and her younger sister.

Flipping through the first volume of VIZ’s “Full Contact” edition, it’s easy to see why DC Comics censored the original English print run. The story abounds in the kind of gratuitous nudity and sexual encounters that make an unadulterated version a tough sell at big chain stores like Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble. DC Comics’ solution was an inelegant one: they re-wrote the script, drew bras and panties on naked girls, and cut some of the most offensive passages. As an advocate of free speech, I can’t condone the bowdlerization of any text, especially in the interest of a more commercially viable age-rating , but as a woman, it’s hard to celebrate the restoration of a graphic rape scene or images of naked girls throwing themselves at the heroes.

Whether those scenes are really necessary to advancing the plot is another issue. The rape, in particular, is an ugly exercise in exploitation, pitting a grown man against a teenager who has a twelve-year-old’s face and a porn star’s body. Though Oh!Great shows us the victim’s terrified expression in several panels, he lavishes far more attention on her anatomy, twisting her body into the kind of grotesque, provocative poses that were a stock-in-trade of Hustler. What makes this passage especially nasty is its underlying intent; we’re not being asked to identify with the victim, or burn with outrage over her violation, but to be aroused by her naked body. In a word: yuck.

From time to time, Oh!Great gives the Natsume sisters a chance to strut their martial arts stuff, suggesting that both girls are as tough and cunning as their male counterparts, but he can’t resist tearing off their clothes, or showing us their panties, especially when they’re in the middle of intense, hand-to-hand combat. And if the characters’ complete objectification wasn’t bad enough, Oh!Great draws such grossly misshapen bodies that it’s hard to imagine who would find them sexy; say what you will about Ryoichi Ikeda and Kazuo Koike’s Wounded Man — and yes, there’s plenty to say about the exploitation of its female characters — but Ikeda knew how to draw beautiful women. Oh!Great’s female characters, on the other hand, look like blow-up dolls, incapable of standing on their own two feet, let alone brandishing a sword or high-kicking an opponent.

Tenjo Tenge fans who were angered by the first English-language edition will be pleased with VIZ’s new translation. Many of the elements that had been eliminated or camouflaged in the first version have been restored; characters drop f-bombs and drop trou without editorial intervention. As an added enticement, VIZ has formatted the story as a series of two-in-one omnibuses, complete with glossy color plates and oversized trim. Given the care with which the new Tenjo Tenge was prepared, I wish I could say that the uncensored version convinced me that I’d unfairly dismissed the genius of Oh!Great the first time around. Alas, the answer is no; the story comes is too perilously close to the porn-and-ninjas stereotype for my taste.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Volume one of Tenjo Tenge will be released on June 7, 2011.

TENJO TENGE: FULL CONTACT EDITION, VOL. 1 • BY OH!GREAT • VIZ MEDIA • 386 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

Tenjo Tenge: Full Contact Edition, Vol. 1

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When I tell people that I review manga, they often ask me, “Isn’t it all porn and ninjas?” No, I assure them, there are manga about cooking, gambling, dating, teaching, crime solving, alien fighting, computer programming, ghost busting, mind reading, wine tasting, dog training, and just about any other topic you can imagine; if there’s an audience to be served, Japanese publishers will find a way to reach them through comics.

“But it seems like every manga I’ve seen has a girl in a short skirt waving a sword,” they reply. I usually offer a counter-example — say, Ouran High School Host Club or What’s Michael? — but I know the kind of manga they have in mind. It’s filled with female characters who have women’s bodies and girls’ faces; schoolgirls who wear their uniforms twenty-four hours a day; fighters who use swords, even though the story is set in the present; and supporting characters who dress like Edo-era refugees, even though their cohorts are wearing sneakers and hoodies. In short, what they’re seeing in their mind’s eye looks a lot like Tenjo Tenge.

Plot-wise, Tenjo Tenge isn’t much more complicated than “girls in skirts waving katanas.” The story takes place at Todo Academy, one of those only-in-manga institutions where students study martial arts technique to the exclusion of anything else. (If anyone attends a math class in Tenjo Tenge, I missed it.) First-year students Soichiro Nagi and Bob Makihara fully expect to rule the roost with their awesome fighting skills, but are quickly disabused of the notion when they run afoul of Todo’s Executive Council. Mindful of their greenhorn status, the boys join the Juken Club, an organization lead by Maya Natsume, a third-year student who’s handy with a sword. In so doing, however, Soichiro and Bob become targets for the Executive Council, which carries on an energetic, bloody feud with Maya and her younger sister.

Flipping through the first volume of VIZ’s “Full Contact” edition, it’s easy to see why DC Comics censored the original English print run. The story abounds in the kind of gratuitous nudity and sexual encounters that make an unadulterated version a tough sell at big chain stores like Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble. DC Comics’ solution was an inelegant one: they re-wrote the script, drew bras and panties on naked girls, and cut some of the most offensive passages. As an advocate of free speech, I can’t condone the bowdlerization of any text, especially in the interest of a more commercially viable age-rating , but as a woman, it’s hard to celebrate the restoration of a graphic rape scene or images of naked girls throwing themselves at the heroes.

Whether those scenes are really necessary to advancing the plot is another issue. The rape, in particular, is an ugly exercise in exploitation, pitting a grown man against a teenager who has a twelve-year-old’s face and a porn star’s body. Though Oh!Great shows us the victim’s terrified expression in several panels, he lavishes far more attention on her anatomy, twisting her body into the kind of grotesque, provocative poses that were a stock-in-trade of Hustler. What makes this passage especially nasty is its underlying intent; we’re not being asked to identify with the victim, or burn with outrage over her violation, but to be aroused by her naked body. In a word: yuck.

From time to time, Oh!Great gives the Natsume sisters a chance to strut their martial arts stuff, suggesting that both girls are as tough and cunning as their male counterparts, but he can’t resist tearing off their clothes, or showing us their panties, especially when they’re in the middle of intense, hand-to-hand combat. And if the characters’ complete objectification wasn’t bad enough, Oh!Great draws such grossly misshapen bodies that it’s hard to imagine who would find them sexy; say what you will about Ryoichi Ikeda and Kazuo Koike’s Wounded Man — and yes, there’s plenty to say about the exploitation of its female characters — but Ikeda knew how to draw beautiful women. Oh!Great’s female characters, on the other hand, look like blow-up dolls, incapable of standing on their own two feet, let alone brandishing a sword or high-kicking an opponent.

Tenjo Tenge fans who were angered by the first English-language edition will be pleased with VIZ’s new translation. Many of the elements that had been eliminated or camouflaged in the first version have been restored; characters drop f-bombs and drop trou without editorial intervention. As an added enticement, VIZ has formatted the story as a series of two-in-one omnibuses, complete with glossy color plates and oversized trim. Given the care with which the new Tenjo Tenge was prepared, I wish I could say that the uncensored version convinced me that I’d unfairly dismissed the genius of Oh!Great the first time around. Alas, the answer is no; the story comes is too perilously close to the porn-and-ninjas stereotype for my taste.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Volume one of Tenjo Tenge will be released on June 7, 2011.

TENJO TENGE: FULL CONTACT EDITION, VOL. 1 • BY OH!GREAT • VIZ MEDIA • 386 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

The Josei Alphabet: S

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“S” is for…

Sekai de Ichiban Yasashii Ongaku, written and illustrated by Mari Ozawa, originally serialized in Kodansha’s Kiss, 16 volumes. Most series about single parents that have been licensed are about single fathers, so this tale of a single mother would be most welcome. Also, I’m kind of in love with the covers; you can view more of them at Kodansha’s site for the title.

Shibou to lu Na no Fuku o Kite, written and illustrated by Moyocco (Sugar Sugar Rune, Happy Mania) Anno, originally serialized in Shufu to Seikatsusha’s Shuukan Josei, one volume. Anno looks at a woman’s ambivalent struggle with her weight in a thin-dominated society.

Shin Yami no Koe – Kaidan, written and illustrated by Junji (Uzumaki, Gyo, Tomie) Ito, originally serialized in Asahi Sonorama’s Nemuki, one volume. I’m not a huge horror fan, but I find Ito’s work irresistibly unsettling, so I’d love to read this collection of shorts created for a josei magazine.

Silver, written by Penny Jordan, adapted to manga by Kazuko Fujita, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Josei Seven, nine volumes. An innocent heiress marries badly and realizes that her husband was just in it for the money. She remakes herself into the perfect woman to avenge herself and her family. It sounds kind of trashy but awesome.

Spicy Pink, written and illustrated by Wataru (Ultra Maniac, Marmalade Boy) Yoshizumi, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Chorus, two volumes, published in French by Glénat. I would be happy as a clam if someone finally decided to publish a josei series from this terrific creator. This one’s about a busy mangaka with no time for a social life who meets an obnoxious but not entirely unpromising doctor on a group date.

Josei Magazines:

Licensed josei:

  • Saiyuki Reload, written and illustrated by Kazuya Minekura, originally serialized in Ichijinsha’s Comic Zero-Sum, published in English by Tokyopop, 10 volumes.
  • Sengoku Nights, written by Kei Kusunoki, illustrated by Kaoru Oohashi, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Comic Crimson, published in English by Tokyopop, two volumes.
  • Suppli, written and illustrated by Mari Okazaki, originally serialized in Shodensha’s Feel Young, partly published in English by Tokyopop, 10 volumes plus extra.

What starts with “S” in your josei alphabet?

Reader recommendations and reminders:

  • Sounds of Love, written and illustrated by Rin Tanaka, originally serialized in Ohzora Shuppan’s Renai Hakusho Pastel, published in English by Luv Luv Press, three volumes.
  • Sugiru Juunana no Haru, written by Fuyumi Ono, illustrated by Kotetsuko Yamamoto, currently running in Gentosha’s Spica. 
  • Shuukatsu!! – Kimi ni Naitei, written and illustrated by Aki Yoshino, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Petit Comic, two volumes.

License request day: Takemitsu Zamurai

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You all know I can’t resist an awards program as fodder for a license request, so I’ve greeted the announcement of the Tezuka Cultural Prize (written up by Asahi Shimbun) with predictable eagerness. Unfortunately, I’ve already requested that someone publish the winning title (Motoka Murakami’s Jin). Fortunately, this year resulted in a not-uncommon tie for first place. (Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Fumi Yoshinaga tied in 2009.) Even more fortunately, Taiyo Matsumoto is involved.

The gifted Matsumoto, of TekkonKinkreet and GoGo Monster fame, has done illustration duties on the other winning title, Takemitsu Zamurai, which was written by Issei Eifuku. The esteemed panel of judges noted that the book was “the most advanced work in terms of the level of illustration techniques.” That shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s looked at Matsumoto’s pages.

It’s about an out-of-work samurai who retires to teach in one of the tenements of Edo-era Japan. Apparently, it’s not a peaceful retirement for a swordsman-turned-educator. In spite of his efforts to leave violence behind, he’s a suspect in a murder, and an investigator starts digging into his past. His presence brings unwelcome visitors to the neighborhood, along with a number of other complications. It sounds like a more muscular House of Five Leaves, and anything that I can favorably compare to House of Five Leaves piques my interest about as much as anything with Matsumoto’s name on the cover.

The eight volume-series was originally published in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits. As you might expect, it’s being published in French (by Kana, in this case). While I’m inclined to take the word of judges like Keiko Takemiya and Go Nagai, I’m drooling to see some of the interior pages, because the covers are sickeningly gorgeous.

Seriously, Viz, you have like one month to announce this title. It’s only eight volumes long, it’s finished, it won the most prestigious manga prize Japan has to offer, and it was practically minted for your Signature imprint. Do your part to liven up San Diego for manga fans.

The Josei Alphabet: R

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“R” is for…

Real Clothes, written and illustrated by Satoru Makimura, currently serialized in Shueisha’s You: This fashionable manga features a plain salesclerk who is transferred to the women’s clothing department of her store. Needless to say, a makeover is in order. We need more fashion manga.

Receptacle, written and illustrated by Rendou Kurosaki, currently serialized in Hakusensha’s Rakuen le Paradis. This has barely started, but it’s got a solid magazine provenance and the cover is really cute. It’s apparently about two girls who kind of crush on each other and talk about their lives as geek girls. I love chatty, woman-driven manga.

Reset, written and illustrated by Mayuri Yamamoto, serialized in Bunkasha’s Horror M, eight volumes. Josei combined with episodic horror sounds like two great tastes that taste great together! In this series, a rotating cast of protagonists are given the choice to reset their lives at a critical point. It sounds like an intriguing premise.

River’s Edge, written and illustrated by Kyoko Okazaki, serialized in Takarajimasha’s Cutie, one volume. This dramatic tale of emotionally stunted teens sounds like the perfect cross-marketing opportunity for indie comics fans. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are already seven or eight versions of this story already on the shelves.

Rouge Noir, written and illustrated by Kyoko Mizutani, serialized in Shogakukan’s Petit Comic, two volumes. An aspiring musician takes up private piano instruction, and we all know how that ends up, don’t we? We don’t? Okay, well, in this case, the teacher gets the unrequited hots for one of her students, and they meet years later at an audition for a jazz combo. And surely we all know how that ends up, right?

Josei magazines:

Rakuen le Paradis, published by Hakusensha, enticingly described by Erica (Okazu) Friedman.

What starts with “R” in your josei alphabet?

Reader recommendations and reminders:

  • Real Love, written and illustrated by Mitsuki Oda, originally published by Ohzora Shuppan, published in English by Luv Luv Press, one volume.
  • RIP: Requiem in Phonybrain, written and illustrated by Mitsukazu Mihara, originally published in Index Communications’ Kera, published in English by Tokyopop, one volume.

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The mighty Manga Bookshelf blogging battle robot expands as frequent contributor Michelle Smith brings Soliloquy in Blue into the fold!

To mark the occasion, Kate Dacey and I joined Michelle and MJ for their latest Off the Shelf discussion. I used the opportunity to examine the sparkly, goodhearted bundle of joy that is CLAMP’s Cardcaptor Sakura (Dark Horse). It’s probably the first CLAMP title that I’ve loved without reservation or blemish, and I can’t believe I have to wait almost two months for the next omnibus to ship.